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By Root 606 0

Regina would soon put on the black silk-and-lace nightgown he’d bought her on a homesick whim during a stopover in Paris on their way to Africa. A nightgown she’d worn every night she thought herself fertile; a nightgown that now gave off a whiff of failure, its intended allure long since worn away, like a woman’s scent fading. He wished he could somehow signal to Regina not to wear the thing — had even, oddly, thought of hiding it — but she would almost certainly misinterpret the comment, would take it personally to mean that he thought her too fat. A word he’d never used, never even suggested, her own distaste for her body so pervasive she assumed everyone shared her own distorted image. It had, he knew now, ruined her life, in the way a cleft lip or a misshapen limb might twist a future. Nothing he could say or do could erase the picture she had of herself, and he thought the damage must have been done early in her life, though he thought it pointless to blame a parent.

He got out of the bed and stood naked at the window. He could just make out, in the eerie light, the jacarandas and the euphorbia trees, and on the air was the smell of jasmine. Returning from the party, slightly drunk, he’d been assaulted by a rush of memories, a neap tide he hadn’t been able to hold back, even when Regina had said, rusty note, Thomas, are you listening? He’d pleaded preoccupation with Ndegwa’s detainment, true enough, though it had not been the source of the nostalgic flood. In the car, he’d seen a young girl — and yes, she had been only a girl then — walking late into a classroom already filled with students and a teacher, her swagger an announcement, a surprise. Her charcoal skirt had come only to the middle of her thighs, a shocking length in school. Every boy and even the teacher had gawped at the long legs (legs as long as birches, he thought now) and at the white cotton shirt, fastened one button too short, that opened to a deep V above her breasts. (And even now a cotton blouse on a woman could arouse Thomas, a mildly disconcerting cue in a country where short skirts and white cotton blouses were de rigueur on schoolgirls.) The girl had stood in the doorway, books in hand and chewing gum, and he was certain Mr. K. would bark at her to spit it out. But even Mr. K. had been rendered speechless, able to do little more than ask her name and check it against his roll, fingers trembling as he did so. And somehow Thomas had known, even then, that the skirt and the blouse and the gum were wrong for her, a costume she was trying on. And had wondered immediately how it was that he had not seen this girl before, for he knew that she was someone he’d have followed for days until he’d made her speak to him. Her expression had not been brash, but rather cautious, and he’d realized then that under the mask she might be afraid; that she was someone who might easily be taken advantage of. He’d willed her to choose the seat next to him, one of the six or seven empty seats in the room (actually prayed for it: Dear Jesus, please let her sit next to me), and, miraculously, as if will or desire were enough, or God Himself had intervened, she had moved forward, hesitated, and then taken the seat behind Thomas. And the relief he’d felt had been so profound that he’d been, for the first time in his life, frightened of himself.

From the bathroom, he could hear the tub draining. Regina would be pink from the hot water. He imagined her naked and tried to work up a kind of desire, touching himself without enthusiasm as he did so. Once, lust for Regina had been thoughtless and automatic, but now he had to forget the frown between her eyebrows, the whining tone in the market, the fact that she despised her body. In attempting to forget, however, he succeeded only in remembering — one set of images replaced by another, a slide show he couldn’t control. A girl jumping off a pier in the October night. A duffel bag flung high and wide into the sea. A dark warren of tiny rooms, smelling of onions and Johnson’s baby oil. Sliding a blouse over the soft bony knob